JPMorgan Chase Names Former BP Exec Its New CIO

Dana Deasy, who oversaw a massive IT overhaul at the troubled energy company, brings crisis management experience to the bank, where he will have global responsibility for technology systems and infrastructure at the bank.

Going outside the financial services industry for IT management expertise, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has appointed Dana Deasy, CIO and Group Vice President of global energy company BP, as the its new Chief Information Officer, effective in December. Deasy will be responsible for the firm's technology systems and infrastructure across all of its business globally.

Mike Ashworth, who served as interim CIO over the past several months, following the departure earlier this year of long-time JPMorgan Chase Guy Chiarello, has been named Deputy CIO for the company and CIO for the firm's Consumer & Community Banking business. His 27-year career at the bank includes stints as head of Global Technology Infrastructure and as CIO for the Investment Bank.

In his role as CIO and Group VP at BP, Deasy was responsible for global information technology, procurement and global real estate. Prior to that, he served as CIO for General Motors North America, Tyco International and Siemens Corporation Americas.

"Technology fuels almost every aspect of our company and is core to the value proposition we offer our customers, clients and communities," said Paul Compton, Chief Administrative Officer for JPMorgan Chase, in a press release announcing Deasy's appointment. "Dana Deasy is an extraordinarily talented executive with outstanding experience, and we are pleased he'll be leading this critically important role for our company."

Commenting on Ashworth's role, Gordon Smith, CEO of JPMorgan Chase's consumer businesses, said in the press release, "We're also very fortunate that someone with Mike Ashworth's deep experience across our company will be responsible for delivering technology solutions to our 52 million consumer and small business customers across the United States."

Although Deasy has not worked in the financial services industry, he does bring some very relevant experience to his new assignment -- that of leading IT for a company undergoing change and experiencing tremendous and sometimes unfavorable public scrutiny. After joining BP in 2008 Deasy led a massive and successful IT transformation effort that resulted in $800 million in IT expense cuts, a 50% reduction in approved vendors, ongoing cutbacks in applications, and a reporting-structure overhaul. In a 2010 interview, Deasy told InformationWeek: "I viewed this as one of the top five CIO jobs in the world, and I fully understood it was a truly daunting challenge--but that's one of the reasons it appealed to me."

The oil & gas pick is a little unusual, I agree. Big oil companies are also very traditional, like JPM, and have massive amounts of data to contend with (like JPM). Perhaps her data management skills are valuable. It seems that all of the data experts in FS suffer from data management group think. Perhaps, Deasy has some new strategies or insights she can bring to JPM.

Yeah, but usually those outsiders come from industries like retail or technology Gă÷ not big oil companies. Though I wonder if Deasy's automotive experience was seen as even more valuable Gă÷ the auto industry is dealing with lots of technological disruption as we enter the connected car era.

I wonder if the goal was to find someone outside of FS, or to find someone who'd managed during a crisis, or none of the above. Clearly they determined they wanted to go outside of the bank to fill the position, which is significant in and of itself. I think it also indicates the high importance of IT to JPM's strategy.